According to a recent research at the University of British Columbia's Sauder School of Business, color and cognitive performance have a veiled link. While red is connected to improved focusing power, blue can boost creativity.
"People are very unaware of the different effects of color: They always think blue will help them do better," said study author Julia Zhu, an assistant professor of marketing at UBC. "If the task is requiring detailed attention, go with red, but if it's asking you to think outside the box, blue will help."
The findings, published on Thursday by the journal Science, are based on a number of studies Dr. Zhu and colleague Ravi Mehta conducted on the students at UBC. They involved about 600 undergraduates and carried out some standard psychological tests related to memory.
Also, the subjects were asked to create new products or imagine new uses for everyday objects.
It was found that students, whose computer screens had red backgrounds, could recall a list of given items more correctly than those who had other hues. The ones using a blue background had made many more mistakes. "They are engaged in the same amount of effort, but they are more exploratory in their thinking style, less literal," said Dr. Zhu.
As children, we are taught that red indicates danger; we believe it as the stop signal is red and most other warnings are also written in red. Blue, on the other hand is related to the sky, the sea and freedom.
Since red, we believe, says avoid danger, it might make us slow and calculative in detail-oriented tasks like memorizing, proofreading, understanding warning labels.
Similarly, blue may drive us towards a feeling of exploration, which in turn adds to creativity. "It's really this learned association with these colors that drive these different motivations," Zhu said.
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